1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to functionalizing of olefin bearing silsesquioxanes including POSS compounds, particularly altering or manipulating olefin groups attached to such compounds
2. Description of Related Art
Silsesquioxanes bearing olefinic groups are of interest because they are among the lowest-cost silsesquioxanes and if such groups could be converted to other functionalities, the resulting POSS derivatives might find use in a wide range of polymer systems. However, there is no suggestion of the above conversion to such derivatives in the prior art.
Also, there are teachings of the preparation of certain POSS derivatives in the above cited 4 patent applications by J. D. Lichtenhan et al. These references, however, do not suggest the above conversion.
Accordingly there is need and market for a method for cleaving olefin, or vinyl, substitutents on POSS molecules that overcomes the above prior art shortcomings.
There has now been discovered methods that rapidly and effectively cleave the vinyl bond of POSS substitutents to produce species that can be subsequently converted to various functionalized POSS compounds. That is, the invention provides efficient methods for the selective cleaving of the above vinyl substituents, using the novel process steps discussed below.